


Moonflower

by kashicanhaz



Series: Blossom Petals [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: BAMF Katara, Childbirth, Dadko and Momtara, F/M, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Slice of Life, Steambabies - Freeform, Waterbending, Zuko is a girl dad and I will die on this hill, Zuko is very tired and not prepared for this, brief maternal peril, playing fast and loose with waterbending healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28845159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashicanhaz/pseuds/kashicanhaz
Summary: Kya had been an active baby, all somersaults and kicks; he remembers his giddy excitement the first time he felt the little thump of her foot inside her mother, Katara’s hands holding his against her belly in just the right spot.This baby doesn’t move much. Katara says she can feel a heartbeat, and there was once or twice that the baby got the hiccups, but most nights it’s a quiet, restful little thing.A tale from the Cinderblossom ’verse
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Blossom Petals [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2115126
Comments: 10
Kudos: 160





	Moonflower

**Author's Note:**

> Some friends were talking about how cute Zuko would be sitting in meetings with a steambaby on his lap and my hand slipped.  
> Praise to DisConsulate as ever for the lightning-fast beta reads. What would I do without you.

Zuko stifles a yawn with his fist.

Perhaps it is the late afternoon sunlight, streaming in slanted and golden from the windows. Perhaps it is the melodic drone of his Agriculture Minister’s voice, harping on some tangent about earth kingdom irrigation techniques that cannot possibly have anything to do with domestic grain prices, which is ostensibly the whole point of this meeting. Perhaps it is simple fatigue—the Blood of Agni is still human blood, as it turns out. The Fire Lady had been up half the night before, shuffling to and from the water closet, and while that might not normally bother him, he’s been sleeping lightly as of late.

He’s in the midst of stifling a second yawn when he catches the sound of a toddler’s tantrum ringing off the flagstones in the hallway outside. 

“Pardon me, Minister Reiko,” he says, already on his feet and hurrying for the door. 

He intercepts Kya’s minder right as she’s about to knock.

“A thousand pardons, your Majesty,” she says in a rush, sketching a lopsided bow with the squalling child on her hip. His daughter is red-faced, whole body pitched back in a wail, a few tufts of dark brown hair escaping her little braid. 

“No problem, Kimiko—is she hurt?”

The woman is young—too young to have her own children, he thinks, though he knows he has no room to judge. She hefts his daughter a little higher on her hip, and he thinks he catches the end of an exasperated eye roll. 

“No, your Majesty, thank Agni. But she’s been asking after the Fire Lady for hours, and not a single thing will calm her down.”

“Mm, I’ll bet,” he hums, feeling a little guilty for being occupied so much of the day when Katara’s sleeping. Kya stops crying at the sound of his voice, reaching out with chubby baby arms for him, and so he scoops her up against his chest.

“Hey there, turtleduck,” he murmurs into her hair, rocking from side to side a little. “Are you missing your Mommy?”

Kya turns her face into his robes in answer, whimpering a little. Zuko makes a decision.

“I’ll take it from here, Kimiko, thank you,” he says, nodding a bow. “Go ahead and take the rest of the day.” 

The minder bows low in thanks, holding it until the door falls shut behind him.

He shifts Kya a little higher on his body, and she tucks her head against his neck. Since her birth, he’d stopped wearing the rhinohide yoke of his regalia for exactly this reason, excepting those occasions that demanded the most rigid formality. She winds her little fingers into his hair as he kisses her forehead, murmuring idle soothing noises and stroking her back with a gently warmed hand. He can feel the tension leave her tiny body as he settles back at his desk across from the Agriculture Minister, who looks mildly affronted at the interruption. 

Kya puts her thumb into her mouth and begins to suck, a lock of his hair wound around her hand, and he lets out the breath he’d been holding.

“Pardon the interruption, Minister,” Zuko says, settling the child on his knee and bouncing her softly. “Where were we?”

The Minister’s gaze flickers skeptically between the Fire Lord and the Princess, letting his monarch’s question go unanswered longer than is strictly polite; Zuko raises his eyebrow again, and the man clears his throat, picking up where he’d left off with something that almost resembles haste. The rest of the meeting proceeds with the closest thing to efficiency he’d ever seen from the Minister, and after he has left the meeting chamber and the door shuts behind him, Zuko turns his attention to the now-quiet toddler in his arms.

“I should let you join me more often, little one,” he says, kissing her cheek in a way that makes her giggle, so he does it again and again. Her big blue eyes glitter, and the sound of her child’s laughter eases irritations of the day, even if only for a moment.

***

Zuko finds his Chief of Staff in her office, busy behind her desk; she shoots to attention when he tiptoes in, but lets her formality melt into a warm smile when she sees the princess in his arms.

“Good afternoon, your Majesty; your Highness,” she says, bowing appropriately. “I wasn’t expecting you to be finished with Minister Reiko so soon. How may I be of service?”

“Afternoon, Lao. I was hoping you might be able to reschedule the rest of the day’s appointments? I think the girls need me tonight. I went ahead and let Kimiko go for the day.”

Her expression shifts, and her nod turns into another bow. “Of course, your Majesty. Anything else you require?”

“Can you have the kitchen staff make sure there are mangoes at dessert?”

Her lips twitch into a smile. “Of course.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Lao.”

“While I have you, your Majesty,” she says, and he freezes in the doorway. “A few messages have come in that I think merit your attention.” She flicks through the neat stack of papers on her desk to find a piece of crisp yellow parchment, sealed with a smear of crimson wax. “The Royal Physician left her report behind for you; she didn’t want to interrupt.”

His throat feels tight as he shuffles forward to accept the scroll, popping the seal with his thumb and spreading his fingers to open it, one-handed.

“Any change?” he asks, voice tight.

His Chief of Staff shakes her bowed head. “No, your Majesty.”

He skims the report, accustomed as he’s become to the messy, spidery hand of the Royal Physician; _risk remains high_ — _mother’s blood pressure low_ — _weak fetal heartbeat_ — _recommendation: continued bedrest, further monitoring._

He presses his lips together, biting down to keep his composure, and lets the scroll roll itself back up with a _snick,_ handing it back to her. “Well, no change isn’t _worse_ , I suppose.”

“No, your Majesty.”

She looks as convinced as he feels. “Anything else?”

She dips her bow a little lower and turns back to her file cubbies, withdrawing a smaller, hawk-sized scroll, bound up in shiny blue wax. _Chief Arnook._

“Not good news, your Majesty,” she says, offering up the scroll. “I’m sorry.”

He plucks it out of her hands and flicks it open, straining a bit to read the cramped writing on the surface of the message scroll.

_Fire Lord Zuko,_

_I lament the news of your wife’s condition, and sincerely wish there was more I could do._

_The deepwater harbors of Agna Qel’a have frozen solid, and even an army of waterbenders could not budge a single ship until spring. I have written to the Avatar in hopes that he might bring Master Ilya to you on the back of his flying bison, but we haven’t heard back yet._

_We will pray for Master Katara morning, noon and night. May Yue keep her in the light of her favor._

_Arnook_

His hand starts to shake. The scroll smokes beneath his fingertips.

His daughter shifts at his hip, and he snaps himself out of the spiral, hefting her higher on his body and handing the scroll back as he clears his throat. 

“Thank you, Lao.”

She bows again, deep. “Your Majesty.”

He shuts the door behind him and looks into his daughter’s eyes, big and blue like her mother’s. They’re glassy from crying earlier, but he worries if she naps now she won’t sleep later. She fusses in his arms, laying a hand clumsily on his face.

He lets out a deep and shuddering sigh.

“I know, turtleduck,” he sighs, kissing her palm as he peels it away from his face. “We’ll be okay.”

She seems to consider this for a moment before she says, “Turtleduck?”

“You want to? Want to feed the turtleducks?”

“Yah.”

“Alright, sweetheart, let’s go feed the turtleducks,” he agrees, setting her down to let her lead him, her tiny hand wrapped around his fingers in her surprising iron grip, as though she alone could tether him to earth in the howling storm of his anxiety.

***

He doesn’t see Izumi until dinnertime: she has her lessons, of course, and then bending practice in the noble quarter of Caldera city, which she attends twice a week. The bending school had been her mother’s idea, to make sure she spent time around children her own age, and though Zuko had been quite nervous at the thought, his daughter loved every minute of it. She’s usually ravenous when she gets back, her competitive spirit leading her to push herself around the other children, but tonight she’s picking at her food, her posture rigid and her face waxen.

“What’s bugging you, cinderblossom?”

Izumi frowns, sighs, and puts down her chopsticks. “I know it’s the full moon tonight,” she says, “and I know that means Mom has to sleep all day, because she’ll be up tonight, but I’m still...worried, I guess.” She chews on her bottom lip, weighing her thoughts. “She didn’t have to sleep so much when she was pregnant with Kya, right?”

“No, she didn’t—not like with this baby, anyway. But she did sleep the whole day after the full moon, right before Kya was born.” Izumi doesn’t look comforted by this. “You might not remember.”

She sighs, picking up her chopsticks again. “I don’t think I do.”

He watches her pick up a single bean and put it in her mouth, chewing slowly, the long fan of her eyelashes casting shadows on the pink apples of her cheeks. He wants to tell her that it’s alright, that there’s nothing to worry about, that her mother will be okay, but she’s a canny child, and she’ll hear the quiver in his voice if he does.

So instead he asks, “how was Master Wu’s tonight?” 

She picks up another tiny morsel of food and pauses halfway to her mouth. “I...I didn’t go, Dad. I wanted to sit with Mom instead.”

He draws breath to speak, a reflexive scold for skipping lessons taking shape on his tongue, but then he hears his father’s voice in his head, howling in fury at him for missing some lesson or another as a child, and a stone settles in the pit of his stomach.

“Oh, kiddo,” he says instead. “You must be really worried, huh?”

Izumi’s face twitches, serious. “Dr. Rangi says she’s not getting better.”

“I know, sweetheart,” he says, his voice dry in his mouth. “But she’s not getting any worse, either.”

She tosses him a glance, and her eyes look so much older than her nine years; wiser, and keen enough to see right through him.

“It’s okay Dad,” she says. “You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared for me.”

The scarred side of his face twitches as she turns her attention back to her food, and he finds his appetite has also disappeared, what little he had eaten sitting leaden in his stomach. 

_Yes, Izumi. Yes I do._

They pick at their dinner in tandem for a few tense and silent minutes, until a member of his staff comes in to serve the dessert. Her face lights up when she recognizes her favorite treat, and she tosses him a smile as she digs in eagerly. 

His heart feels a little less heavy watching her, but his appetite doesn’t return.

***

Katara is awake when he gets back from putting Kya down, and Izumi is next to her, reading aloud while her mother breaks her fast. He winces at how tired she still looks, and how pale—clammy, with a sheen of sweat sparkling at her temples—but when she turns her face to greet him with that beatific smile of hers, the hard shell of his worry fractures, and lets the warmth of loving her into his bones.

He smiles back at her from the doorway, lingering for a moment to take in the scene; they look happy, he thinks, enjoying that close bond of theirs that he’d been a little jealous of in their early years. He wants to etch this moment into his mind, box it up and keep it, just in case…

In case…

“I can _hear_ you glooming over there, Fire Lord,” she teases, catching his eye again and folding her arms across her chest. “What have I told you about worrying?”

He feels his heart twist in his chest like a thumbscrew, even as his lips quirk up. “It’s bad for the baby.”

“Sure is. And I’m a healer _and_ a mother, so I’ve got twice the authority,” she winks at their daughter, and the screw in his chest tightens. “Were you going to join us, darling? We’re just getting to the part where the dragon goes in the lake.”

He sidles up to the bed and places kisses on both of their foreheads, ruffling Izumi’s hair as he does. “Let me get changed for bed, and I’ll join.”

Minutes later, he crawls under the duvet on Katara’s other side, tucking himself in close so she can lean her head on his shoulder as they listen to their daughter read. Carefully, he lays his hand on the taut dome of her belly, all but holding his breath to feel something, anything, between his fingertips.

***

Kya had been an active baby, all somersaults and kicks; he remembers his giddy excitement the first time he felt the little thump of her foot inside her mother, Katara’s hands holding his against her belly in just the right spot. This baby doesn’t move much. Katara says she can feel a heartbeat, and there was once or twice that the baby got the hiccups, but most nights it’s a quiet, restful little thing.

There had been a miscarriage in the autumn before this baby was conceived, mere weeks after she’d discovered she was with child again. It wasn’t uncommon, everyone assured him, but he’d still fallen into a fog-white depression afterward, leaving him tender and dazed. But Katara had seen him through it like a beacon, resilient and hopeful and determined to try again.

“I want a boy,” she’d confessed, caressing the still-flat plane of her abdomen, her hair still damp from the bath she’d taken to confirm her condition. “A little prince to name after your Uncle, and hopefully inherit his kindness.”

“We’ll see if I’m capable of siring boys,” he’d laughed, folding himself against her skin to skin, and nosing kisses into her temple and cheek, her collarbone and her neck. He had only meant to give her a little affection, but then she’d drawn him up to her lips and sunk her fingers into his hair, holding him there to drink him in until she’d had her fill. They’d traded tender touches and shuddering sighs, a soft and simple pleasure, until he’d found himself with his cheek pillowed on her stomach, stroking a warm palm across the pewter stretchmark scars their first two children had left behind.

“Is that you in there, Prince Iroh?” he had asked her tummy, and she’d giggled beneath him, a sound of easy and unbridled joy. He feels it too, so light in his chest that he feels like he’s floating. “Whoever you are, I can’t wait to meet you, little one.”

***

Dr. Rangi has prepared him for the worst, especially in the case that his wife goes into labor in the next fortnight or so. The baby is small, not growing the way it should, and Katara’s been sick and faint nearly the entire time, going on bedrest early in her second trimester to keep her strength up to the task of carrying the child to term. He can see that she’s scared—he knows her too well to miss it—but she’s spent the entire pregnancy putting on a brave face for him, just as he’s been doing for her.

Izumi starts yawning just as the moonlight peeks over the garden walls, and so he packs her off to bed; when he comes back, Katara has propped herself up with a mountain of pillows, her writing desk and a pile of correspondence settled on her lap. She gives him a guilty little smile as he lurches back into the bed, leaving the sconces lit for her as he flops face-down on his pillow.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in your room tonight?” she asks him, scratching little soothing circles across his back. 

_His room._ He hasn’t slept in _his room_ since the wedding night, when Katara was finally allowed to move into the Fire Lady’s chambers. He’s been much more comfortable since they made the move, not least because the consort’s chambers face west, and so the morning sunlight doesn’t heat the room quite so quickly, permitting him to linger a few precious minutes longer with his wife.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he grunts back, muffled by the pillows. “You know the light doesn’t bother me, Katara.”

“Or the sound of all my frustrated sighing as I try to build a hospital from my bed?”

“Or that.”

“Or the two dozen times I’ll get up to pee?”

“Or _that_.”

She shifts to card her fingers through his hair. “You are such a dedicated husband.”

“Don’t give me too much credit,” he grouses, rolling onto his side with his back to her. He pulls her hand from his hair to his face, kissing her knuckles before letting her go. “I forgot to ask you how you slept today.”

“Fine, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“I woke up a little when they were cleaning the pond this afternoon.”

Zuko whips upright, twisting around to look at her. “Someone was _cleaning the pond_ this afternoon?!”

She rolls her eyes. “I only woke up for a second.”

“I made it abundantly clear,” he growls, “that you were not to be disturbed today under any circumstances. Kya sat through half of my meeting with Minister Reiko because she wouldn’t stop screaming for you. And someone had the audacity to _clean the pond_?”

“I’m sure it was a mistake, darling,” she says, stroking his shoulder. “It only woke me up for a second. It was barely a disturbance.”

This tempers him, but only a little; he leans into her touch as her hand comes up to stroke his face, her thumb tracing his bottom lip.

“It’s my duty to protect you,” he pouts. “From lightning strikes, or from loud noises when you’re napping.”

“And you do a fantastic job, my dear, but you cannot be everywhere at once.”

“...I would be if I could be.”

She huffs a little laugh and leans in a little to kiss him, but with her belly in the way he still has to close most of the distance. On another night this might have turned intimate—she’d been nearly insatiable while pregnant with Kya—but not tonight.

“Goodnight sweetheart,” he says, drawing away and settling again on his side, his back against her hip.

“Goodnight Zuko.”

And so he drifts off to the sound of her breathing, and the scritch of her ink pen, and the intermittent creaking of her lap desk as she bears down upon it. The flickering of the candles cast shadows on his eyelids, and he watches them dance in sleepy wonder, giving him dreams of fire sprites and dragons.

Hours later, when the moon is high in the dark before the dawn, he rolls over in his sleep. 

He rolls into something wet.

He blinks himself awake and props himself up on an elbow, seeing that Katara has fallen asleep in her mountain of pillows, her eyes closed, mouth parted and slack. He wonders if her inkwell had tipped over in the bed again, and so he sits back, searching the puffy duvet for the offending wetness that had awoken him.

The top of the duvet, though, is clean.

_Agni, no, no, not her water, just two more weeks, we just need two more weeks, Yue, please..._

Panic rising in his throat like bile, Zuko rips back the covers, sending his wife’s desk and pens clattering to the floor. She doesn’t stir in her sleep.

It isn’t her water.

The sheets are soaked with blood.

“Guard!” Zuko screams, the sound splitting his throat, and the door bursts open in answer. “Fetch the Physician! The Fire Lady is bleeding!”

He tucks his fingers into the spot below her jaw where her pulse is strongest, and under his fingertips he feels a faint fluttering. She’s so, so pale, her lips cracked and drawn, eyes opened to slits, cold sweat pasting her hair to her face and neck.

“Zuko?” Katara says, coming to, her voice reedy and thin. 

“I’m here, darling, I’m here. You’re going to be alright.”

“M...bleeding?” she slurs, trying to sit up and look at her legs, but he holds her back.

“Shh! It’s okay! There’s a little blood, but the Physician is coming—”

“Need water.”

“Water?” he asks, frantic. “You need water? To drink?”

She struggles to shake her head. “Me...in the water.”

He frowns. “Katara, I don’t know if you have the strength—”

But she grabs his face, tugging him towards her, and he sees her eyes gone wild in the low light. “Water, Zuko. _Now.”_

He hesitates just a beat. It will take too long to draw a bath.

“The pond? Will that do?” he asks, gathering her into his arms and stumbling out of the bed. She nods, or at least he thinks she does, her head bouncing with the motion of being carried. 

He manages to get the screen door open and steps out into their private garden, fighting to keep his footing as he stumbles towards the pond. The water splashes up to his thighs as he wades in, going to his knees to hold her head above the surface. Even in his urgency, he spares a moment to be grateful that the pond was cleaned today.

Her eyes close as she settles in, laying her hands on her belly, and he realizes that the moon shines directly overhead, bathing her in its silvery light. The longer it shines on her face, the more alert she seems.

She takes a deep breath, and a faint blue glow starts to materialize around her hands. His heart thunders in his ears as she probes at herself with her bending, her expression darkening the longer she looks.

“Is the baby coming?!” he blurts out.

“Don’t think so,” she murmurs, then whimpers with pain. “Something’s—dislodged? Coming away from the—aah!”

She convulses with pain, biting her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, and all he can do is keep her head up, her hands too busy to hold. He’s wretched watching her, completely helpless to ease her pain or do anything to truly aid her. Even though he’s desperate to. 

“...can you fix it?” he asks, his voice small as she pants through the pain.

Her voice shakes when she answers. “I don’t know.”

He feels the weight of every one of his fears come bearing down on him like an avalanche, deadly and disorienting. His ears ring. It’s all he can do to keep himself upright as he reels from it, heart beating out of his chest, his breath coming too quick to catch. He can feel his pulse in his teeth.

Her body bows in another spasm, belly peeking out of the water in the reflection of the moon, before she relaxes with a groan.

When she sinks back under the water, the glow from her hands spreads out around her entire belly, flaring bright, and she gasps, tilting her head up to look.

“That’s—that’s not me.”

The glow brightens until it starts to sting his eyes, silver-white in its intensity.

“What?!”

But before she can answer, she bites out a keening groan, her body buckling around her belly. This time she does reach for his hand, and he lets her crush it in her grip; he thinks he can hear the bones cracking, but he doesn’t dare let go.

It’s a minute before she relaxes, breath hissing through gritted teeth, and the bright flare around her belly fades to the dim blue he’s used to. She releases his hand and feels around the bottom of her abdomen, a healing glow gloving her fingers and her brows pinched in concentration. 

“...I think the bleeding stopped,” she sighs. 

Relief breaks over his body in waves, strong enough to numb his toes. He lets out the breath he’d been holding, slinking down in the water to wrap his arms around her chest. A shuddering sob wracks him as he tucks his face into her neck, squeezing fiercely. For a moment he almost wants to laugh, giddy that she’s okay.

But then she cries out again, her body going rigid, and he feels his stomach drop.

He’s heard that cry only once before, two years ago, pacing in the hallways outside the birthing room while she was in labor with Kya. He’d thought it had been difficult to hear then, at the end of an easy pregnancy with all the world’s best midwives in the room, but it turns out that was nothing compared to the terror he feels hearing it now, two months early and alone with his wife in a pond.

“Is that—?!”

“Yeah,” she hisses. “Whatever happened with the healing, I think. It’s coming early.”

“But I thought it needed—”

Her eyes flash as they find his, her fingers fisting in his shirt, and he thinks of the girl who stopped the rain. “Listen, Zuko, I’m going to need you to keep it together now, alright? Can you do that for me? Can you keep it together?”

He only falters for a second, stunned. “Yeah, of course, whatever you need.”

“Breathe with me, okay? We breathe like this,” and she shows him, in and out, slow and deliberate, and soon he’s leading her, holding her hand as the pain comes in crashing swells. His focus narrows to the rhythm of their breath, her hand tight in his, and the squinch of her eyebrows when she pushes. 

He’s not aware of time passing as such, rooted in the infinite present of their breathing, but when the moon shifts and the sky lightens, he realizes they must have been out here for nearly an hour.

“Zuko,” Katara whines, tilting her head to look down her body. “I think you’d better get down there.”

He scrambles to get between her legs, squinting into the water, and with the first pale fingers of the dawn he can just make out a shape emerging from his wife, and he cups his hands before it.

She pushes, and the child slips into his hands, heavy and impossibly small.

He pulls the baby up out of the water, up into his arms, and though he hurries to hand it off to Katara he feels his universe shifting in that moment, expanding to include this little one at its center, along with its sisters and its mother.

He watches, rapt, as Katara fusses with the child until it takes its first breath in a tiny, rattling cry. Both parents sag with relief, and she shifts to look at the child again, warmth brightening her eyes.

“Another girl,” she laughs, and he crawls up next to her to look at his new daughter, red-faced and tiny and _alive_. His heartbeat finally starts to slow, and his limbs feel heavy as the adrenaline starts to ebb in his veins, replaced instead with the steady flickering of his inner fire. 

“Guess we can’t name her after Uncle, can we?” he says, stroking the baby’s little cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I told you we should have thought about girl’s names.”

Katara rolls her eyes at him, shifting to offer him the baby to hold. “Warm her up a little, will you? I’ve got to take a look and be sure I’m alright.”

He nods, focusing as she tips the child into his hands, and she’s so, so much smaller than Kya was at the hour of her birth that it makes his heart seize with worry. But she’s still crying her tremulous little cry, and her tiny limbs are punching and kicking, and when he slides open his sleep robe to settle her against the warmth of his chest she makes a little cooing noise that somehow sets the whole world to rights. He closes his eyes, focusing on the feeling of her heartbeat against his shoulder.

The palace physician arrives in an apologetic rush, and Zuko reluctantly hands over the baby to be cleaned and examined by one of her aides while she examines Katara herself. He has a hard time listening to anyone, exhaustion starting to drag in his vision, but he takes comfort in the fact that the doctor’s voices sound calm and relieved. His domestic staff materialize with towels and a stretcher to convey the Fire Lady back indoors, and it feels like a whirlwind as they are all washed, changed, and settled back into fresh bed linens with the baby dozing on Katara’s chest.

“Izumi’s going to wonder where I am this morning,” he mutters, petting back the dark fuzz on the baby’s head. She squirms in her mother’s arms, making a fist with her impossibly small fingers, and yawns, and he falls in love all over again.

“I’m sure someone will tell her,” Katara hums, leaning her head on his. Their breathing syncs up as they watch their newborn fuss in her sleep, and time goes honey-slow as he basks in the warmth of his relief. _Safe. Both of them, safe._

When the baby stirs, Katara shifts her so she can feed, and as she settles in her mother’s arms her eyes open, the same deep indigo that Kya’s had been when she was born.

“Do you want to call her Ursa?” Katara asks. He furrows his brow, gazing at the child, and shakes his head.

“No, she’s not an Ursa, I don’t think,” he murmurs, shifting to be closer to his wife. “What about you? Do you want to call her Kanna?”

Katara chuckles a little bit. “That’s a sweet thought, but she’s not much of a Kanna either, I’d say.” She sighs, and it flutters the wispy fine hairs on the top of the baby’s head. “I was so sure she’d be a little Iroh,” she says, and the baby makes a loud sucking noise, startling a laugh out of both of them.

“What about Iroko?” Zuko offers, and the baby looks in his direction when he speaks, as though she recognized his voice.

“ _Iroko_ ,” Katara says, a smile breaking across her face, warm and slow like a sunrise. “Iroko. I like that.”


End file.
